Detachment Quotes

If I don't see the reason of someone being my friend, chances are, we are just floating and I need a ship to set sail.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude — a feeling which increases with the years.

~ Albert Einstein

Detachment, properly understood, means freedom, inner freedom. And, although it is not a word Jesus used, detachment expresses very well an important element in his spirituality: the ability to let go. In the Christian tradition this has been spoken of as “purity of heart” or as the process of becoming “poor in spirit.

~ Albert Nolan

The author reveals a cultural change that took place when clergy were paid based on a tax on the land's value rather than what it produced. This meant that, while parishioners could suffer through a terrible year, clergy would always have a comfortable one.

~ Bill Bryson

Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream.

~ H.g. Wells

—Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend.—I will take the risk, said Stephen.—And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.

~ James Joyce

Your personality of the mind is like a castle of sand around the sea. The time you begin to disassociate yourself with different experiences and impressions of both the external and internal world, you won’t find anything inside.

~ Roshan Sharma

All continuous suffering, is self inflicted.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

Naturally, the plague of humanity named confidence (or pride to some), which symptoms often render each person to fiercely believe himself to be above average, let them to believe that it was others who were affected by this case but not them. Everyone thought they had the quintessential ability to detach themselves from the cases they were working, even if the victim looked and behaved exactly like their son, daughter, niece or nephew.

~ Bruce Crown

We prefer the not wanting and not having to the losing.

~ Jen Pollock Michel

It may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly.

~ Peter Høeg

Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

~ H.g. Wells

Crossing the Atlantic on that new day was supposed to be a sharp delineation, a from-now-on demarcation in my life story. What I took off from was not supposed to arrive with me upon landing or ever pulse in me again. From the ocean and sky and the hours in flight, I intended to extract a selective, permanent amnesia.

~ Laurie Perez

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”“Yes,” said Harriet, “but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel.”“I don’t think that matters, provided one doesn’t try to persuade one’s self into appropriate feelings.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Perhaps a past of bingeing, restricting, or purging comes back to haunt you from time to time. Maybe you have to fight hard battles against vanity, gluttony, and shame. But with God’s saving power, every new day is a gift, an opportunity to detach yourself from tormenting thoughts about food or how you look and to attach yourself to God. Remember, we all hunger for God, more than we hunger for a big bowl of ice cream or a perfect physique.

~ Kate Wicker

She breathes all the political gases that flow around this, but she never seems to inhale them.

~ John F. Kennedy

Unrealistic expectations often lead to disappointment, while simple unbiased attention and detachment to outcome often lead to pleasant surprises.

~ Gary Hopkins

The greatest asset to the human experience is the ability to navigate one’s emotions. By practicing the skill of detachment, one can successfully step back from the potentially destructive and tune into the purely positive

~ Gary Hopkins

And do you see how beautiful and graceful the birds are when they are flying and soaring? The ground has many comforts for them to enjoy... But in the sky they are truly what a bird is meant to be. So it is with the human heart.

~ Aleksandra Layland

If you simply get detach from yourself, it gets easier for you to see, how you perceive life.

~ Roshan Sharma

All too often, the rabbit hole is as deep as you have dug it.

~ Gary Hopkins

It is impossible to control outcomes or results, although most of us have been programmed from a very young age to believe otherwise. The idea that we can perform actual ‘magic’ causes tremendous dysfunction, unnecessary suffering and prevents the development of emotional resilience.

~ Christopher Dines

[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)

~ Stephen Levine

While understanding that we need this matrix to experience life on earth, we should also be able to enjoy a certain sense of detachment from it, and thus feel more empowered to make our own choices. We should thus come out feeling much more in control of our own personal journeys.

~ Julia Woodman

The sight of the wall of water outside reassured me, giving me the idea that it made very little difference whether I stayed with her, or set out alone on my journey that had neither visible starting point nor destination. It didn't matter: since, however closely I became involved with another existence, my own world would always remain secret, inaccessible and shut-off; nobody would ever see me, except as a dim, changeable, wavering shadow, through its impenetrable, semi-opaque walls.

~ Anna Kavan

However, the serious seeker of detachment will have to embrace the Holy Trinity of Ss - Solitude, Stillness and Silence - and reject the new religion of Commotionism, which believes that the meaning of life is constant company, movement and noise.

~ Michael Foley

It was my letting go that gave me a better hold.

~ Chris Matakas

The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.

~ Chris Matakas

As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.'

~ Pema Chödrön

Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means distant connections - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from every side to become efficient rather than intimate.

~ Thomas Moore

Detachment is a basic requirement for seeking enlightenment. Anyone or anything we are attached to has power to manipulate us although we all have freedom to choose.

~ Hina Hashmi

I am alone. My heart beats only for myself. The strikers mean nothing to me. I have nothing in common with the mob, nor with individuals. I am a cold person. In the war I did not feel I was part of my company. We all lay in the same mud and waited for the same death. But I could think only about my own life and death. I would step over corpses and it oftened saddened me that I could feel no pain.

~ Joseph Roth

A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything

~ Idries Shah

I used to think I was in love with Mia because she was in love with me. Now when I watch her strutting down the runway, twisting and flouncing the way her mother trained her, I know she's just a human coat hanger. A wired body I hold late at night and try to fit into.

~ Laurie Perez

I should not mistake her calm probing for the absence of anger.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

There is a world of difference between the experienceof 'care' – the wiping of a bottom, the bathing of a body: basicbiological obligations – and the intimacy that makes us wantto live.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

There are, of course, the people who revolve around themselves--but I agree with you, she's not one of that kind. She's totally uninterested in herself. And yet she's got a strong character--there must be something. I thought at first it was her art--but it isn't. I've never met anyone so detached from life. That's dangerous.''Dangerous? What do you mean?''Well, you see--it must mean an obsession of some kind, and obsessions are always dangerous.

~ Agatha Christie

Manifest plainness,Embrace simplicity,Reduce selfishness,Have few desires.

~ Lao Tzu

(John F.) Kennedy was an elitist and not a populist. He was enthralled by a certain British aristocratic view of politics in which an enlightened ruling class makes reasoned, rational decisions that are in the interest of the more emotional and easily manipulated masses.

~ Scott Farris

Life is a combo of attachment and detachment. Love is the most natural thing and you are bound to get attached to persons, places and things. However, while getting attached so, you should know that all these attachments too have an expiry date. It's exactly at that point that the art of detachment helps. Persons, places and things are meant for specific periods in life after which you should know how to let go and embrace newer things. The world is beautiful and you should have belief in Him.

~ Neelam Saxena Chandra